Story Ideas That Didn't Make the Cut
by Quorinne
Summary: Here are a lot of the story starts i haven't been able to continue. If they inspire you awesome let me know if you want to take the plot so i can read it.
1. Naruto-Haruno Aoi

Haruno Aoi was born the first child of Haruno Kizashi and his wife Haruno Mebuki; both jounin of Konohagakure.

He was smaller than most newborns with green eyes and bright pink hair. That strange color coupled with his unisex name would lead to a great deal of confusion with fellow academy students. Most would look at his small stature and effeminate face and believe he was a girl; a matter which wasn't helped by his mother's insistence to play dress up. It wasn't uncommon for Aoi to attend school with ribbons braided into his pink forelocks. Thankfully she eased up a bit once his sister Sakura was born.

Aoi wasn't particularly talented at ninjutsu or taijutsu. He was average at both though he far surpassed his classmates in chakra control and the only student with a higher IQ belonged to the Nara clan.

Normally this would be overlooked and Aoi would have been shoved into a desk position if not for one small blurb in the history text about Senju Tsunade.

During any given week Aoi would deal with the taunts of the other boys in his class. The teased him about his poor taijutsu skills and pushed him into the girls bathroom at least once a week. The teachers would step in if they noticed but most of the bullying took place out of sight. The frequent insults and calls of 'girly looking weirdo' led him to a strong desire for revenge. Not just to make them leave him alone but to make them burn with humiliation. He tried everything he could think of to get stronger but the books available to academy students weren't much help. In Fact most of his inspiration came from a short thirty minute lecture about chakra flow and story about the three legendary Sannin, more specifically the Legendary Medic.

The text was boring and mostly ignored; in fact the only paragraph Aoi ever bothered paying attention to was only three sentences.

"Senju Tsunade is the last known member of the Senju Clan, one of the founding clans of the Hidden Leaf Village. Known as one of the three Sannin Tsunade possesses the slug contract and is listed in every village's bingo book and has one of the largest recorded bounties though few have ever attempted to collect. She is best known for her great skills as a medic and her ability to shatter mountains with perfect chakra control."

Perfect chakra control, the line burned into Aoi's mind with perfect clarity. Over and Over he read that one paragraph before asking the academy instructor for more reference books about the Medic and any books about medical-ninjutsu.

Medical Ninjutsu was one of the only shelves in the library that was nearly always full since few in the village found it interesting. Scrolls full of knowledge which Aoi had all to himself.

Every free moment the boy had went into studying his chosen field and memorizing information about anatomy, biology and chemistry. Guide books on the properties of local plant life were memorized and Chakra control exercises were mastered almost as soon as they were introduced. It took months of research and practice before he managed to produce healing chakra and weeks more before he could put it to any practical use.

His first patient was a fish he kept breathing out of water by using medical chakra to pass oxygen through his gills and lungs without water. His second was a rat with its fight forepaw mutilated. Higher up the food chain he went healing Birds, alley cats and stray dogs until he was able to successfully repair cuts, bruises, torn muscles and broken bones. More advanced techniques required an experienced Medical ninja to teach him which wouldn't happen until he graduated from the academy.

In between library visits and classes Aoi began practicing any Chakra control exercise he read about in hopes of duplicating Tsunade's legendary strength. Tree walking was mastered on the first attempt and water walking barely took a day. Origami was first learned normally and then done by the careful manipulation of chakra spread over the paper to fold them into delicate cranes and butterflies. He learned to manipulate Chakra through nearly any part of his body and could even make a half decent chakra scalpel by the end of the year but still could not crack a boulder with his fist, although the attempts did give him an excellent opportunity to treat fractured fingers.

In fact it wasn't until his last year in the academy that he found the scroll which would let his recreate one of the Legendary Medics signature techniques. It was a thick never read scroll tucked into the corner of the library titles "The applied physics of chakra circulation in the human body."

The book was a gold mine for those with perfect chakra control like Aoi. Within months of discovering the text he was steadily building the force and speed behind his strikes. The image of Uchiha Daisuke's stunned face as Aoi shattered the training dummy during taijutsu practice was priceless. His personal tormentors seemed to disappear as he started winning the practical spars and climbed towards the top rankings in class, although he still lost frequently to Hyuuga Mamoru.

When his class graduated Aoi was placed on a team with Inuzuka Hana and Yamanaka Midori both were aspiring medics much like himself and the three were assigned to Tokebetsu Watanabe Kaede. A fairly high ranking medic who worked at the hospital whenever he had a break from Mission assignments. Which wasn't very often as there were few medics in a village that called for a high demand.

Under his Tutelage all three grew to become very fine medics as the years went on. Midori became a point of pride amongst her clan members as she developed countless poisons and antidotes popular amongst many of the ANBU members for being nearly untraceable and mimicking natural deaths. Hana became the main vet in charge of her clans Ninken. A very high point of honor amongst a clan who valued their canine partners more than they did themselves.

Aoi spent two years as a field medic after making Chunin where he accumulated a small fortune ( Field Medics were among the highest paid position in the village), a Fortune he used to open an academy dedicated solely to training medics. The academy offered open classes during a variety of hours which made it easy for academy students and fresh genin alike to take supplementary classes during their free time. While the class itself was popular in the beginning less than a quarter of the students made it past the chakra control exercises. In fact one of his first full time students was actually his little sister who basically used the lessons as an excuse to escape fro bullies.


	2. Naruto-Stop the Ride! I Wanna Get Off!

Story Ideas

Disclaimer: I do not own anything. Any story written and posted in this belongs to someone else. I will never own Naruto.

AN: These are all first chapter ideas I have written. I like to think the plots are pretty original but the writing style may not be the greatest. If anyone likes the ideas feel free to use them; just let me know so I can read what you write. The stories won't belong to any one show and there will probably be a few crossovers.

Someone Stop The Ride! I Wanna Get Off!

They stopped being surprised after the third loop. At that point they were mostly bored; also a little insane. Living your life over and over again can do that to a person. No one was quite sure how it happened. There wasn't any big war. No strange sealing experiment was taking place and all the bijuu were accounted for and causing no trouble what so ever. Everything just started repeating itself over and over again. It was so boring they honestly considered becoming missing Nin just to break up the monotony, Sakura and Sasuke probably would have if Naruto was easier to convince, and Hinata always backed her former current and soon to be husband. They still couldn't figure out the proper tense for their marriage vows.

It was just the four of them which sucked. They had made some pretty solid friendships during the war which wouldn't be continued now that their former comrades were decades younger than them no matter how well they could fake being children in public they never would have managed to form true friendships with children when they themselves had stopped being children a long time ago.

So instead they were born again and again living the same events over and over again. They got very good at ending things quickly. Sasuke managed to prevent the Uchiha massacre and coup three separate times. Usually by just poisoning the clan elders and blaming it on Orochimaru; Manda still hadn't figured out how he was being summoned to Konohgakure. Anko was deemed innocent every time when Inoichi Yamanaka cleared her of any wrongdoing, she couldn't summon Manda anyways, she didn't have either the proper reserves or Manda's permission.

Naruto decided to take up Fuinjutsu mostly because now he actually had time to connect to his mother's clan. He was a lot better than he let on. Twice now the council thought his apparent genius was the work of kyuubi and had him executed behind Sarutobi's back. The others usually only stuck around long enough to watch the third read out their sentence before committing suicide. The look on the villagers faces when they realized Naruto was the son of the last Whirlpool princess and the fourth Hokage was priceless. He didn't need to be protected from his parent's enemies if he was already dead after all.

Hinata became Clan head only once and decided it wasn't worth it when the clan elders tried picking her husband. Apparently Naruto wasn't in the running. After that she held back just enough to foist the job off on her younger sister who would usually end up marrying someone the clan approved of regardless of what they did to the timeline. She always remembered to save her uncle though, the Kumo ambassador had a hard time kidnapping her after receiving a well-placed juken strike to the testes. Her relationship with Neji improved much earlier.

Sakura was tempted to break Ami's nose but instead settled for scarring her and her friends for life. It was easy when you knew the Hell Viewing Technique. She was also the only one who could pretend to study her chosen field from scrolls. Neither the Chidori nor the Rasengan were written down anywhere so they boys had to wait until they were shown in every time line.

Eventually they managed to figure out how manipulate their academy scores to keep everything how they wanted. Hinata would go to team eight and Sakura, Sasuke and Naruto still ended up on team seven. For the most part all four strongly believed in the phrase "If it isn't broke, don't fix it". It made things easier to track that way which came in handy when the whole Akatsuki came up. They had gotten really good at handling them quickly. Most of them were killed but a couple like Pain and Konan could usually be reasoned with under the right circumstances and as long as Naruto did the talking. Hell they even managed to get through to Deidara once; though that was mostly the antipsychotic meds they slipped into his drink and they hadn't been able to do again since.

All in all the trauma of reliving the war over and over again had faded long ago, leaving behind a mind numbing boredom in its wake. Unfortunately stuck once more inside a child's body they couldn't liven things up with large quantities of alcohol, at least not until they made Chuunin or turned 16 which was the legal drinking standards in the hidden leaf. It used to be 16 or genin but some idiot twelve year old ruined it for everyone during the second shinobi war when he died from alcohol poisoning.

So now here they were; four grown adults in children's bodies about to be assigned to their very first gennin team all siting together ignoring the glares of Sasuke's rabid fan club (Sakura refused to believe she was ever that bad regardless of what the other three told her). It was easier said than done as occasionally someone would throw a blunted practice shuriken in their direction. Never at Sasuke though, never ever at Sasuke.

After the fifth projectile was deflected with a pencil Iruka-Sensei finally walked into the classroom holding the team assignments.

After a short congratulatory speech, which they all ignored, Iruka read out team placements. It came as no surprise to anyone when absolutely nothing changed.

"Team seven will be Haruno Sakura, Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke."


	3. Inuyasha Yu Yu Hakusho-Stranded

AN: I do not own Inuyasha or YU YU HAKUSHO. I'm just a fan.

Takes place after the Dark tournament Arc and during Kagome's summer vacation in her first year of high school.

Prologue

This was the worst vacation Kagome had ever been on. It seemed like a great idea at the time, after all who wouldn't want to spend five days at an island resort walking along warm beaches and sleeping in hammocks. When her mother won the tickets Kagome was thrilled, she had been counting down the days until the cruise started as she packed and repacked her trusty yellow backpack. If she had known the damn ship was going to sink she would have left all of her pretty dresses at home and remembered to grab her bow.

Instead she was stuck on a very small life raft with her younger brother and a couple of boys her age, one of which had a strange demonic aura. Her bag and Souta's both filled with whatever they had managed to grab from their room. It didn't look like either of the other teens had grabbed anything.

Her mother was on another raft closer to the rescue attempts, which was a small mercy all things considered. She might have even felt relieved if she wasn't too busy being worried about the size of the waves separating their raft from the rest and slowly filling the bottom with sea water.

Souta was waving and shouting at the men trying to rescue the survivors in hopes of getting their attention. She didn't have the heart to tell him no one could hear them over the noise of the helicopters and the sound of the storm.

For three hours the group of four watched as the line of rafts grew farther and farther away until they eventually faded from sight all together. Both teens across from her alternated between hushed conversations and brief arguments as Souta cried himself to sleep in her arms.

Kurama knew he should have declined Yusuke's offer. Nothing good ever happened when the young detective uttered the phrase "what's the worst that could happen?" Nothing good ever came of anyone uttering that phrase.

Instead he accepted the ticket and packed his bags. His mother was thrilled he had finally decided interact with others his age even if the teen did have the looks and manners of a delinquent.

If he had known about the storm he would have vacationed in the Makai; it would have been more relaxing.

Now he was forced to endure Yusuke's arguments as the group of four slowly drifted away from the group. That alone would have been bearable if he didn't have to listen to the crying of the younger boy or deal with his sisters suspicious glare. At least she was quiet.

Souta was scared and his sister wasn't helping. She didn't seem upset at all she just kept staring at the red haired guy across from them which was stupid because she had Inuyasha even if they were stuck in two different time zones. Inuyasha would have been great right about now, he could probably jump all the way over to the other rafts. Instead he was stuck with his sister who wouldn't even help him try to get their attention and a couple of other guys her age who probably couldn't kill a demon to save their lives!

As the line of survivors faded farther into the distance Souta finally gave up and cried himself to sleep.

Yusuke Yuremeshi was going to become a hermit. The amount of tight spots he had been getting himself into was ridiculous. Sure he was a punk but he hadn't done anything to warrant this many near death experiences.

This one wasn't even demon related and yet he still had an awful feeling that bratty toddler was behind it. For all he knew little baby gods could influence weather patterns.


	4. InuyashaLog Horizon Crossover

The Elder tales online was something Kagome thought she had outgrown a few years ago. She had played the game religiously from the age of ten until she turned thirteen where dungeon raids and all night computer generated battles were replaced by fashion and moisturizing.

Then of course she turned fifteen and spent close to a year fighting actual demons and praying to every god her shrine celebrated that the demon guts didn't damage her hair. It may have seen vain but for a century without conditioner all of her traveling companions seemed to have fantastic locks.

Once that was over well…. let's just say adjusting as hard. She wasn't terribly traumatized, which was actually pretty incredibly once she counted all the mass graves, but something like that had left its mark. To put it plainly, she was restless. She absolutely hated the fighting but she couldn't deny missing the days spent trudging along in search of jewel shards or the way it felt to channel her spiritual abilities whenever she released an arrow. It was so incredible and terrifying at the same time just remembering gave her an adrenaline rush and a very large part of her wanted it back.

Unfortunately the well was truly good and closed and she had never felt as much as a whisper of a demonic aura. She no longer had any reason to channel her spiritual abilities. In fact considering she lived in a time where using her powers might get her in a government styled lab she felt the need to absolutely never use them no matter how much Souta begged her to show him.

So with all of this restless frustration Kagome once again found herself drawn into the world of elder tales at the beginning of her high school career. Juggling the game with school work was a breeze compared to juggling entrance exams with hunting Naraku. And so it began; Kagome's life as a fanatic MMORPG player using a character she based as closely to her real self as possible with only a few minor changes. One of which being her race; humans were all well and good but who was she to pass on a chance to have fuzzy fox ears and a tail however vicariously it may have been. The Fox-Tail race was absolutely adorable and it reminded her a bit of her friends from the past. Luckily it didn't prevent her in game character from being able to use the purification techniques of the Kannagi class.

She debated for days over her subclass in her earlier levels switching back and forth between production classes like woodcrafter and scribe before finally settling on herbalist. Not only did it allow her to create medicines and potions to use but it also provided her with a tidy source of income by selling off excess potions and herbs to other characters. The subclass had already netted her a small fortune in gold.

It wasn't anything close to what her life had been like in the past but it certainly helped. She would spend hours playing the game fighting through dungeons and going on raids with a skill set she never possessed in real life. It was sort of addicting. Towards the end of her third year of high school Kagome had managed to reach a small measure of fame amongst a few of the more notable guilds. Shielding characters in a video game was a lot easier than trying to do it in real life; whenever she accompanied a party on a raid the odds of a member being sent to the cathedral was next to nothing especially after she reached the level cap and her damage mitigating spells grew stronger. She had even gone on one or two raids with the infamous Debauchery Tea Party getting a nice couple of bonuses from drops such as a lovely rare long bow with twice the range of normal in game bows and a flute that summoned a griffin mount. Of course she was hardly considered a member, they had basically just ran into each other while scouting out new raids in the Elder Tales forum.

So all in all while Kagome was pretty happy with the game and her new online friends even if a few of them like that Akatsuki guy never seemed to want to socialize or use the voice chat features. In fact she would go as far as to say that she loved the game, an opinion which wouldn't change until the night they released the Homesteading the Noosphere.

==============Scene Break===================

A part of her was convinced this was somehow her fault. Who else had the sort of dumb luck that would get thousands if not millions of people trapped inside the MMORPG they all played in their free time? And if she hadn't been so utterly convinced the jewel had been destroyed she would have had a ready explanation. How this actually happened though was a mystery to her and everyone else currently stuck in Akihabara. The only thing she knew for certain was that it couldn't possibly be a game. NPC characters in video games didn't have souls or any sort of spiritual presence like the people of the land did.

AN: So the idea is that Kagome gets sucked into Elder Tales along with the other members of Log Horizon. I may write more later on but I doubt it. For now this is also up for grabs to anyone who wants the plot.


	5. Inuyasha-Time was an Unconquerable Force

Disclaimer: I own nothing of Inuyasha and I never will. The genius belongs to someone else.

AN: I am not Japanese, I have very little idea on how it actually works so if I've gotten anything wrong I'm sorry. As for a seemingly fifteen year old striking out on her own I would like to point out that high school is an option and a privilege for Japanese teens. Mandatory education stops after junior high.

Time was an unconquerable force; it had always existed and would always continue to exist. It was sentient in its own way, knowing that it would touch every life imagined from microscopic bacteria to the wealthiest king; never before had anything been able to circumvent its twists. Oh sure occasionally someone like that fake celestial maiden Kaguya would creep up and have themselves exist however briefly along a different path in time. Physically still in their original world yet living in the time stream of a different dimension while time seemed to pause. They would still be affected by their own bodily needs. They would still need sleep and require food. They would still age; even the demons who managed such a feat would age however slowly. But no one had been able to just brush it aside like it was nothing more than an annoying pest buzzing too close to their head.

Never before had someone existed who possessed a barrier against the flow of time itself. Until Kagome Higurashi accidently made herself known to the powerful force when she refused to fall prey to Kaguya's time spell. The flow of time twisted into unnatural folds could not touch her; it could not influence her in the slightest. Her friends holding her possessions were likewise saved but it was not their aura which rejected the flow of time. Time did not notice them; the one he noticed was the girl he could not touch.

Well fine then. If the girl rejected time, then time would return the favor. It took the girl years to accept that she hadn't aged a day past fifteen. A little less to notice some of the few perks that came with her apparent immortality. No matter how little sleep she got she was never tired. Eventually she stopped sleeping all together and spent her nights studying or sorting through the scrolls and artifacts in the shrines storage. It made for some very interesting lessons after the final battle when she became stuck on her side of time. As a result she had enough free time nearly master Kampo, or the Japanese art or herbal medicine, and figure out an effective way to actually use her spiritual powers.

She didn't feel hungry no matter how long she went without eating (a fairly dangerous experiment her mother put an immediate stop to). Injuries sustained vanished almost immediately; something she refused to test both for her mother's sanity and her own dislike of inflicting pain on herself. It seemed as though her body was stuck in a constant state of being and the Higurashi family as a whole could never figure out why. They just knew bad things would happen if people started to figure it out.

So at the age she should have turned 25 Kagome was packed up and shipped across the country to live in an abandoned shrine way out in rural Hokkaido under the name Higurashi Aoi; a distant cousin of the caretakers of the Higurashi shrine in Tokyo. The young girl had decided to follow the family tradition of becoming a shrine maiden and her great uncle had asked her to help restore an old shrine dedicated to the local forest spirit, normally he would have requested his granddaughter fulfill the responsibility but she had decided to marry immediately after high school and moved to china with her new husband. No one had lived on the properties in nearly fifteen years and it was starting to fall apart. The local villagers immediately agreed to have someone take up the position as shrine caretaker even if that someone was a rather young girl.

She spent three years rebuilding the damaged grounds and performing various duties for the locals. From creating Omamori and blessing marriages and births she made herself out to be the perfect shrine maiden and neighbor. Life was good, tranquil even while it lasted. It would have lasted longer if the doctor from the local clinic hadn't started to ask about her age. It wasn't anything too serious, no one suspected there was anything unnatural about it. The doctor just asked her consider an MRI; he thought she might have a problem with growth hormones.

Six months later a young priest and his family moved into the shrine while Kagome one again adopted a new identity. The locals thought she was moving to one of the bigger cities for medical treatment; she was leaving the country.

It wasn't too hard to accomplish; a lack of proper identification prevented her from taking airplanes or going through customs but there were several transportation barges going all over the world. She knew enough about her abilities to create a barrier humans couldn't see through and thanks to her unusual body chemistry she didn't actually need to eat or even move , and could conceivably hole up for weeks in freezing cargo bays. Thankfully she decided against the week long cruise and settled on the day and a half journey from Kumamoto to Shanghai.

As she stepped foot off the cargo ship and onto the soil of China she began a journey that would take her all over the world from the high mountain peaks of Tibet and the monks she studied under to the wild jungles of the Amazon Rain Forest and the shamans she spent two years avoiding as they were quite frankly creepy with few exceptions.

She became a healer and a midwife. At one point she was a village leader and at another revered as a goddess much to her chagrin. She learned several languages and many professions very rarely traveling into developed cities. It was not until her mother lay on her death bed that she returned to Japan posing as her own daughter. The reunion was bittersweet as she once again saw her family for the first time in twenty years and was introduced to her 'cousins' and 'aunt' knowing that she couldn't stay long. After a few more years she would once again be forced to move before people started noticing that she hadn't aged.

In all of her travels and with everything she had learned she had never managed to discover why she appeared to have frozen in time or how to fix it. Instead she once again began walking the earth traveling from country to country learning the history and language existing yet not living, and above all else never drawing attention to herself.


	6. InuyashaJustice League Crossover

Inuyasha/Justice League crossover

It would have been easier if Inuyasha had actually betrayed her Kagome thought sitting beneath the branches of the Goshinboku. It had been nearly three month since the battle had been won and against all odds the entire group survived including Kikyo. Kagome didn't hate the older woman; she couldn't even if she wanted to. Every time she looked into her eyes she could see everything. Her sorrow, her rage at being replaced, her love for Inuyasha, and surprisingly enough, even the little fondness she seemed to hold for reincarnation.

No, Kagome could never hate Kikyo even if it would have made her broken heart more bearable. It would have been so much easier to delude herself into thinking that they were both horrible beings who would ultimately end up damned to hell. Unfortunately she knew that was a lie. They were both Kind and brave, bound by duty and lonely. No matter how much she wanted it to be true Inuyasha could never love her the way he did Kikyo. So in the end it wasn't a surprise when he made his choice. He still meant the world to her, he was still someone she considered a best friend and she knew he would always consider her his friend. They had been through too many battles together for that to change.

For now though, she was raw. She had apparently been too busy falling in love to consider the consequences of losing that love. If it meant they would once more be together then Kagome would gladly go back and do everything over again. Even the near death experiences.

She couldn't even adjust to her time properly. Nice boys like Hojo would talk to her and all she could think of would be how useless they would be in a battle. The idiot delinquents from school would leer and the only way she could describe them would be pathetic. For all their bravado they had horrible stances and she could probably take them down with a couple throws Sango taught her. And she sucked at hand to hand combat. Her strength would always lie best with the bow.

Shopping with Eri, Yuka and Ayumi was boring and a bit pointless. She had clothes thank you very much and heels hurt worse than they were impractical. School was actually getting better though. She was using it as a distraction and while she wasn't yet back yet into the 98th percentile she was getting closer. But other than that her world seemed so very disappointing. She couldn't sleep most nights without nightmares. Apparently she hadn't had the time to be traumatized while they were still fighting but now that the fight was over she kept dreaming the same thing over and over.

It was one of the villages destroyed by Naraku though she couldn't remember which one. Or maybe it was a fake Village created by memories, either way it was awful. There wasn't a living soul left in the village when they walked through and the scent of blood and decay was drowning her other senses.

It wasn't an unusual occurrence in the past to spend a day or two on mass graves. The warring states era was full of death. If it wasn't demons killing humans then it was humans killing each other off. They had gotten pretty good at picking the softest dirt to dig in.

In her dreams though, the dirt was never soft. It was hard and red and bled with every handful of dirt they removed until she could feel the thick sticky blood beneath her feet soaking into her socks. The bodies were heavy and rotted with parts of their bodies eaten by spiders and covered in webs.

Never the faces though, the faces were always left perfectly preserved each wearing an expression of terror. From the oldest man to the smallest child they stared back at her in horror as though she was the one to do such a thing to them and she couldn't get them to look away.

The dream usually ended as they finished getting all the bodies into the graves. When it did she could finally wake up. But sometimes it didn't end there, sometimes they got back up. Rotting corpses crawling from graves just staring at her with their cold dead faces twisted into an anguished expression.

And sometimes still she was burying her friends, all of them looking just as the corpses did mutilated and accusing. Waking up from these dreams was the worst. No matter how hard she tried to tell herself that they were all living happily in the past those dreams always left her a sobbing retching mess in the bathroom. She had gotten used to functioning off of only a few hours of sleep at night.

Her mother was worried though, as hard as Kagome tried to keep quiet she frequently woke her mother with her nightmares. She could see it in the way she looked at her with a mixture of sadness and grief. As well as shame, she caught her flinching away more than once after a particularly bad nightmare left her incoherent for several moments.

They didn't have a choice though. She made a very big mistake in the past when she shattered that jewel. If she didn't fix it who knows what her world would have turned into. They didn't have a choice, the thought was of little comfort after a bad night.

Her family didn't know what to do; she couldn't go see a therapist. Five minutes into her story and they would start writing prescriptions. She couldn't talk to her mother, the woman felt guilty enough and Kagome couldn't bring herself to tell her how bad it really was. So she pretended everything was fine. She smiled more and went on group dates with her friends and the boring guys they knew. She joined the archery club and made it to the Nationals. Who knew learning to shoot at moving targets made hitting stationary ones so much easier? She learned how to wake up from a nightmare without crying out, no matter how bad it was. She took up Jujutsu and Karate in her spare time quickly moving through the ranks. If she pushed her body to absolute exhaustion the dreams didn't come as often.

Eventually her act became something almost real. She still missed the friends she made in the past, but her broken heart had healed. The nightmares still came but not as often and they no longer made her sick. She graduated from high school with the highest score in her class decided against college. Instead she took over the shrine duties from her grandfather, who was too old to do much of the work. It made him happy to know that the shrine was in the care of what he called 'A real life miko.'

Life was certainly getting better, which was why she couldn't decide if her new friend was a blessing or a curse.

In the three years Kagome had been back she had never felt any demonic aura in her time. She wondered what could have happened to drive them underground but she couldn't bring herself to search, too afraid of what she would find. Five centuries was a long time and not all of her friends were Daiyoukai material. So instead she convinced herself they were all holed up in what wild land was left secluding themselves away from the world humans were slowly destroying. She had done a pretty good job of convincing herself that she would never sense another demon again. Which was why it came as such a shock when she found herself startled awake in the middle of the night. Several faint demonic auras were brushing harshly against her senses; violent and angry surrounding a human presence.

She had jumped out of bed and slipped on her shoes in seconds, pausing only long enough to grab her bow and quiver before running out the house and down the shrine stairs. The feeling was coming from the same park she and Inuyasha were once confronted by Sounga. Close enough to get there quickly but far enough out of the way not to draw attention.

There were four demons, all of them ugly and misshapen with little power. They were surrounding a dark skinned human wearing a bright green outfit and a mask. He was holding them at bay with a strange barrier but none of the attacks he sent towards them seemed effective. Not surprising considering the durability of most Oni, unless you used fire or were capable of purification most attacks just rolled off of them. Thankfully they were also really weak so most villages could easily take out a few without serious injury.

Her first arrow pierced two, turning them both to ash. There wasn't any point in leaving them alive, Oni were man eaters. If they were allowed to wander Tokyo unchecked her neighbors would soon start to go missing. The other two proved themselves to be as stupid as they looked when they went to attack her instead of turning to run away. They hit her barrier and died the same way as their friends. After three years of peace her heart finally started to race again and all she could feel was disappointment. It took her longer to get down the shrine steps. Where was the fight! The adrenaline! That was way too easy.

She hadn't realized she said that last part out loud until the strangely dressed man started talking.

"Easy for you maybe. Nothing I did was working, just what did you do?" He was staring at her now and it made for a rather strange picture what with him floating in midair and glowing green. She also really didn't like the glare her was giving her.

"I purified them." She said

"You killed them" he accused

"The Oni would have devoured any human in their path, of course I killed them what was I supposed to do? Feed them my little brother?" She retorted "Sure the kid can be a pain, but death by digestion is a little harsh."

"There could have been another way."

She gave him a hard look, it didn't really look like he believed it himself. She waited to talk until she was certain her was listening.

"Have you ever dug a child's grave?" She asked him "They don't have to be as large as their parents. Six feet down but only four across; and every shovel feels heavier than the last. The first child will be here in a few hours with his mother. The Watanabe's youngest, he's turning six this year and his mother always brings him by Saturday morning at six to play in the sand box. They would have eaten him first, children are easier to catch you know. By the time anyone figured out how to kill them this park will have been painted red with blood. So don't you dare tell me there could have been another way, there is never another way when it comes to the man eaters."

She didn't bother waiting for a reply. She just turned around and went home, the strange man staring at her retreating figure. Thankfully he didn't try to follow, she couldn't deal with company right now. Her little speech brought up too many memories

She didn't see him again for three days; and when she did he looked normal. Gone was the green spandex; instead he was wearing office casual, black slacks and a white collared shirt. Also gone was the glare, instead he was wearing an annoyed scowl and sporting a small limp as he cornered her in the shrines storage shed.

The words he spoke seemed to physically pain him. "I need your help. I've found more of those things from the park. They're holed up in a warehouse downtown."

"How many more?" this could be bad, while weak Oni were generally pretty destructive. If they were keeping calm then someone else was probably calling the shots, someone stronger. And she hadn't heard anything about mayhem or murder on the news recently.

"Fifty, at least. I don't know who you are or what your angle is kid, but if four of those things could paint the park red how much damage can more of them do? How many casualties are we looking at?"

She exhaled a shaky breath, suddenly very much aware that she hadn't seriously fought demons in three years, and in those numbers? "They'll attack in mass at the largest gathering of humans, probably a school or an office building and that is only if we're lucky."

"Lucky?" he said incredulously "you've got a strange definition"

"Lucky." She repeated firmly "Because that means they probably just want to wait until more humans gather before they start to feed. Lucky, because that means something stronger isn't pulling the strings."

"Something stronger? Those things seemed pretty strong to me." He told her.

"They're really not." She sighed "Oni are durable but actually very weak, their attacks would never have gotten through the shield you use. A little fire and you would have been fine dealing with them all by yourself. They're the lowest members of the demon hierarchy, even below Hanyou."

"Hanyou?"

"Half demon, half human. Hanyou children are often treated cruelly by both. But even most of them could take on an Oni. The real problem is whether or not these guys have a boss and where we can find him."

"What makes you think they aren't working alone?"

"Because Oni are stupid. It's a fundamental part of their species and they _don't_ wait. They should have done something by now. They never should have hid in the warehouse to begin with. I don't like this. Whenever something starts like this it always goes from bad to worse to 'is it time for another mass grave yet?' It's not supposed to be like that here."

"Then you'll help?"

"It's my duty, when do we leave?"

"Grab what you need now. I don't like the idea of waiting."

Her new friend seemed to have a problem with her outfit; specifically he had an issue with her lack of a mask; her normal miko garbs were common enough in japan that really didn't give a clue as to her 'secret identity'. Apparently he was under the impression that she spent her free time partaking in spontaneous bouts of masked heroics. When she calmly explained that no she wasn't an up and coming superhero and never thought about concealing her identity he decided to provide her with one. A dark green one formed by the strange energy his ring produced. Allowing foreign power to settle against her skin itched like crazy; but she allowed it. Odds were someone would notice and it really wouldn't be worth it to get her face plastered all over the news. She really didn't need the publicity.

The warehouse was crawling with demons though luckily they were all lower class. This included their boss. An arrogant bat demon around the level of the thunder brothers without the enhancements of the jewel shards. While the fight itself was annoying it wasn't difficult; especially since her new friend took her speech about to heart and decided to use a rather large amount of fire to clear the way. As a former soldier he didn't have a problem with killing in defense once someone explained the alternative was being eaten.

It took less time than she thought it would to clear the warehouse of demon cannon fodder but they had still managed to attract a crowd by the time it was over. A crowd which included three different news vans which all managed to capture the bat demon flying into the air on leathery looking wings as the 'famous green lantern and unidentified meta human' gave chase.

Coverage of the battle was plastered all over the news worldwide for months with everyone from religious fanatics to conspiracy nuts speculating on just what had happened inside the warehouse and who the mysterious priestess was. Subsequently every shrine across the country saw a marked increase in visitors.

Another side effect was her younger brother's sudden interest in her fighting abilities. Apparently he had been under the misconception that all she did in the past was stand back and give directions; a line of thought which was corrected by seeing his sister shoot a demons wings off on national television. As a result he spent all of his free time begging her to let him use her bow.

She was beginning to think it was less annoying when he considered her a damsel in distress. Twice already he had tried to sneak off with the longbow from Mount Azusa. Eventually she bought him his own and told him to stay as far away from hers as possible.

After two weeks he grew disenchanted and moved on to another weapon. A Shakujo styled after the one Miroku used. The staff seemed to come more naturally to the young boy who began trying to convince her to let him become her sidekick. It seemed he though she planned on making the masked heroics a regular thing. After she explained rather firmly that no, she wasn't going to jump into the fascinating world of superheroes and supervillains she did relent a little and teach him how to form spiritual energy into barriers and attacks. Though that was only after making it clear that if he ever did something to put himself in danger she would seal off his spiritual abilities until he turned thirty or their mother stopped crying whichever came first.

Months passed before Kagome saw the green lantern again and as luck would have it the battle they became involved in was much harder as they attempted to rescue the last Martian and save the planet from an alien invasion. A battle she ordinarily would have stayed away from if not for the pounding headache she got whenever the Martian attempted to telepathically communicate with it. The trip to America likely would have been easier if she spoke more than a few phrases of English.

AN: So basically the idea is that Kagome had a run in with the green lantern after returning to her time for good which basically drags her kicking and screaming into the occupation of masked vigilante. No particular romance in mind and the thought was to basically make her an auxiliary member who dealt primarily in demons and dark magic. But then I hit a road bump and can't think of how to continue the story.


End file.
